TBR and then released into the wild

This book is a huge departure from his Prey series (I enjoy these). This new series is about Kidd (a computer hacker) and his girlfriend LuEllen,
I didn't like either of the characters or the plot. There was so much computer jargon, I should have gotten college credit for reading this book. The will be the last Kidd book for me.

the following review is from amazon ca:

I finished The Hanged Man's Song last week and remember only enough of it this week to suggest that it's not worth the time. I know everyone loves it, and I gave it a chance after the equally disappointing The Empress File, another Kidd novel, but neither was worth the time and money.

I like John Sandford a lot -- I've read all the Prey novels, including the two starring Clara Rinker twice -- so I picked up the Kidd novels because I read John's novels faster than he can write them. Both were a disappointment. Carl Hiassen's blurbed suggestion that Kidd is "a hero who's impossible to resist" is wrong. And his suggestion that Kidd is "the Travis McGee of microchips" would suggest he can't do comparison studies. I've read all the McGee books at least three times over the decades and the two heroes are nothing alike, nor is the writing.

Sandford causes himself some credibility problems with such stultifying techno-inanities as "The laptop was no lightweight -- it was a desktop replacement model from IBM with maximum RAM, a fat hard drive, built-in CD/DVD burner, three USB ports, a variety of memory-card slots." Omigod, THREE USB PORTS?! This man/machine combo is going to be invincible, assuming he can get his fat hard drive into gear.

Unfortunately, this passage is in a book published in 2004 and it appears on page 3 of my edition, causing a few micro-alarms to go off in my already skeptical brain. It just gets worse on page 42 when Kidd talks about putting the Encyclopedia Britannica on his laptop, where it "sucked up about 1.2 gigs. That means you could put about, uh... -- I did some quick calculation -- something like thirteen Encyclopedia Britannicas on one DVD."

Uh, better slow down, Kidd. My DVDs hold 4.7 gigabytes, meaning you could maybe squeeze four on a disk, not 13 -- and that's assuming he has the cracking skills necessary to get the encyclopedia in the first place and that 1.2GB is an accurate figure, never safe assumptions in this book.

Clever lines throughout number fewer than ten and dialogue and plot are weak. The back of the book tells us that "Sandford's charismatic hero, Kidd, returns in an electrifying novel of murder and Machiavellian intrigue." Every adjective wrong. As for charismatic, if you can remember the last Coke you had, you might have a chance of remembering Kidd after you finishing reading this.

If you need a John Sandford fix -- and don't we all -- reread one of his Alex Davenport books. The two Clara Rinkers are lovely the second time around. --.

RELEASE NOTES:

released for the never judge a book gold challenge; outside the stores